Namche 1 Dam Info - by Hobo Maps - Go Back to Hydropower Projects Web Page

Namche 1 Dam images below during construction:

Namche 1 Hydropower plant project is located at Namlong village and Samgorthong village, Thathom district, Xaisomboun province.

The project is in the general area of the red marker in satellite image below. It is near Road 1D that goes south from Muang Khoun to Paksan.

It has a small dam and the powerhouse contains two 8.4-MW Francis turbine-generator units for 16.8 MW total installed capacity. The Hydropower plant project has been generation and supplying clean electricity to Electricte du Laos (EDL) since June 2019.

B.Grimm Power PCL officially opened the 16.8-MW Nam Che 1 small hydropower plant in Lao PDR in late November 2019. The run-of-river hydro project is on the Nam Che River in Xaisomboun province and was estimated to cost US$49 million to develop.

The project developer, Nam Che 1 Hydropower Company Limited, is a joint venture between B.Grimm Power Co. Ltd. and Daosavanh Co. Ltd. Daosavanh is an engineering company in Laos. EDL will buy the power generating by the facility with a contracted capacity of 15 MW under a 25-year power purchase agreement. B.Grimm Power is a unit of Bangkok, Thailand-based B.Grimm Group.

The plant was designed as a water diversion set-up to bring water into the machine room turbines via an enclosed concrete channel. A dam wall, 23 m high and 50 m across, was built to store water for smooth and uninterrupted hydropower plant operation. The structure of the dam incorporates an overflow edge and two hydraulically-operated weir gates. Sediment in the water settles out in the chamber ahead of the high-pressure channel when flow velocity is reduced, negating the need to install a desander. The majority of the (+/-) 300 m power descent stage is encased in an underground concrete conduit and the water only emerges into an above-ground steel channel just before it reaches the machine room.

The 76 m gross head allows each of the two horizontal-axis Francis turbines to pump through a volume of up to 12 m³/s. Each machine rotates at precisely 500 rpm and working at maximum capacity can generate a constant peak power output of 8,403 kW. The air-cooled synchronous generators are directly coupled horizontally with the turbine shafts and set up to ensure a nominal capacity of 10,000 kVA. The power generated is conducted at a voltage of 13,200 V from the generator terminals to a medium-voltage switchgear, then to transformers and straight on to the (+/-) 15 km energy conduit via the high-voltage switchgear.